


The Arc of Ascension, Fragment e13,2: Emily Repairs Something Tiny

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [65]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Background Relationships, Canon Lesbian Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Electronics, Engineering, F/F, Hobbies, Oasis (Overwatch), Post-Talon, Talon Emily (Overwatch), Talon Lena "Tracer" Oxton, precision
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 11:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: The new gods have risen, ready to grapple with a world of heroes. Moira O'Deorain herself has been reborn, now made one of the creations her previous self meant to rule, and she works with her wife - the goddess Mercy - and their ensemble of new deities to remake the world, toimproveit... for everyone.Emily, on a weekend, very carefully puts something very old back together. After all - even a Goddess needs a hobby.Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Ascensionis a continuance ofOf Gods and Monsters: The Arc of CreationandThe Armourer and the Living Weapon. It will be told in a series of eddas, sagas, interludes, fragments, texts, and cantos, all of which serve their individual purposes. To follow it as it appears,please subscribe to the series.





	The Arc of Ascension, Fragment e13,2: Emily Repairs Something Tiny

**Author's Note:**

> We initially failed to set last Sunday night's instalment as part of the series, and as a result, series subscribers may not have received notification. If you didn't, these two instalments may be read in any order relative to each other.

_[Mid-July, 2079]_

Lena leaned against the doorframe leading into her wife's home workroom, watching as the weapons engineer poked about at the little broken square of plastic encased in one of her "clean boxes," the ones she used when doing particularly delicate work.

The teleporter slathered a bit of soft Dutch cheese - one of Danielle's favourite cheeses, of which she had many - on the end of the small baguette she was carrying, and took a bite.

"What is it?" she asked, when Emily nodded at the black square, and leaned back a bit.

"Oh! Hi, sweet. Almost forgot you were there." She blinked a bit, and pointed at the little black object. "It's a bit of antique technology - last century stuff. Take a look!" Emily turned a little, in her chair, making room.

Lena leaned over, careful not to send crumbs or bits anywhere; Emily kept a _spotless_ workbench. The rack above it might have been an incoherent kaleidoscope of tools and parts, but the bench itself? Spotless.

The little plastic square - cracked, in several places - was now in two parts, top and bottom separated, the top just a broken bit of plastic, the bottom, also plastic, but with many little metal flanges sticking out, lines leading from them, inward, to a much smaller rectangle, in the centre.

"'Fraid I don't know any more than I did before looking. Complicated little thing, though. What is it?"

"An MD 80187-1. Though I'm assuming the MD part, just 'cause of where it came from. Could be the standard version."

Lena smiled innocently in that "I have no idea what you're saying" way she had, and Emily chuckled. "Right. Ah. A computer processing unit - a co-processing unit, just for math - from last century. Cracked, maybe by impact, probably a long time ago."

"Right, then!" Lena nodded, and took another little bite from the baguette. "Whas's it from?"

"You know Khayyir, over at the ministry?"

Lena swallowed. "...that guy in you've been working with, in field systems? The one helping you with the new accelerators?"

"Yeh, him! He rebuilds antique equipment at home, for fun. And he got this old bit of American kit in trade from some other friend of his, and he's trying to get it working. One of the processor boards got pretty badly thrashed, and he's working on the backplane, but wondered if I'd have a go at the math coprocessor."

Lena looked at it again, peering. Even for their eyes, this was a lot to ask. So many tiny lines. Resolvable, but... "Seems fiddly, even for you."

"It _is_ ," she said, smiling. "I love it."

"Is that line supposed to be... it looks... scarred? And those three below it, all on the upper right?"

"Oh!" Emily grinned. "Nicely spotted! No! And there are a couple of others, as well." She bounced in her chair. Her wife might not care about electronics, but she could spot an irregularity as well as any of them. "But the good news is - I think there's no physical damage to the transistors. If they're still good - I'm pretty sure I can fix this."

"Huh," Lena said, interested because her wife was. She took another bite of the baguette. "Are they rare?" she said, through chewing.

"Rarish, yeah. But mostly he just wants to keep it as original as he can." She reached through the gloves back into the cleancase, and grabbed a shockingly precise set of microtools. "Want to keep me company?"

"Sure!"

"Might need a magnifier, for some of this..."

Lena watched as her wife carefully, and gently, bridged the tiny gaps in the tiny traces of the tiny chip - only six in all, something that looked like damage turned out not to be, under magnification - and reconnected a couple of failed external connectors to outer pins. Precision work indeed, and slow, but not actually all that difficult - particularly, not for _her_.

Half an hour later, looking satisfied, she quick-epoxied the cracks in the lower case back together, setting each connection under UV for speed-curing, then did the same on the upper half of the case, and put the two pieces back together, using a reversible solvent for the last step.

"I'd put it back together for real, but I need to make sure it's working, first," she said, mostly to herself, but also to her wife. "...aaaaaaand... done!"

She pulled the little bit of plastic and metal out of the clean case, grinning, and moved it over to a large, flat board, with many sorts of sockets on it, and inserted it, into one.

"...what is that thing?" Lena asked.

"Test harness Khayyir loaned me. Tests all sorts of antique ICs. If I end up doing more of this, I might get one of my own."

"No, I mean... that antique he's rebuilding. Y'know, what was it?"

"Oh!" She blinked. "Some sort of dedicated field computer. Huge, chunky beast, really heavy and dumb as a post, used for artillery targeting. Mostly he just likes the old displays - it's got two, and they're both original. One's working already, and he's just about got the second one going again."

She made sure the chip was well-seated, and punched a pair of buttons on the board. "Let's hope I haven't bodged this up..."

A small display appeared over the board, with a bunch of numbers and letters - "those are op codes," Emily said, as Tracer watched the list scroll by, nodding - "and this is all a _really_ good sign. I think we... whup, no, temperature warning..."

She stopped the test. "It shouldn't need one, I don't think, but... I'm not sure. Might just be the temporary epoxy... let me add a proper heat sink. Honestly, these old chips..." She grabbed a spare heat sink she had sitting around, stuck it to the chip with conductive paste, and restarted the sequence, which ran to completion, temperature well in bounds the entire time. Emily bounced, happily.

"I take it that's good?"

"You can't tell from the way I'm dancing in my chair? When I want something fixed, it gets _fixed_." The blue-skinned engineer beamed, glancing up at her wife. "I'm just the best, sweet. Don't forget it."

Lena laughed, nodded, and kissed Emily's forehead. "I never, _ever_ do."

**Author's Note:**

> This is the thirty-fifth instalment of _Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Ascension_. To follow this story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual works.


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